


Holding on to Heal

by Quokkalicious



Series: Constellations of a couple and a crew [1]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, During Uncharted: A Thief's End, Elena has officially reached kid status™ with Sully too, Elena tentatively adopts Sam (later on), Elena's side of the Libertalia business, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Idiots in Love, Other, Whump, because that pirate booty is worth less than your marriage, good guy Sully
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:06:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24601303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quokkalicious/pseuds/Quokkalicious
Summary: Elena has a hunch, but the implications threaten to punch a hole into the life she's build with Nate. Their confrontation in Madagascar is a jumbled mess of accusations, and she doesn't know where to go from here. Sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better.
Relationships: Elena Fisher & Victor Sullivan, Nathan Drake & Samuel Drake, Nathan Drake & Victor Sullivan, Nathan Drake/Elena Fisher, Samuel Drake & Elena Fisher
Series: Constellations of a couple and a crew [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778359
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	1. Nagging Notions

**Author's Note:**

> So, I know this has been done before. But I adore these lovable idiots, so here’s my take on Elena’s side of the whole Libertalia business. As always, characters are not my own.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena knows that something doesn't quite add up.

“Listen, I’m- I’m sorry, I gotta go. Jameson’s calling me over,” Nate’s voice echoed against her ear.

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

“Yeah, love you, too,” Elena answered faintly, but he had already hung up. She leaned back into the couch, tapping her phone against her lips repeatedly and blindly staring at her feet on the coffee table. He had lied to her for over a week already, _she knew_ , but she was still silently debating whether she was ready for the inevitable next step. She already wanted to rip her dearly beloved a new one, there was no doubt about that, but she wasn’t quite prepared for the finality of knowing the extent of Nate’s most recent – _and probably_ _risky_ – dumbassery. She thought back to their past adventures. More horrible scenarios possibly causing Nate’s death popped up in her head, so scratch risky, _deadly_ sounded more likely by the minute.

She had been over the moon for Nate when he came home with the news that Jameson had gotten the permits and thereby the green light for the  salvaging job off the Malaysian coast. Whenever they talked about it, Nate fiercely denied to want anything beyond the quiet life they’d build for themselves here in New Orleans, but she knew him better. Their relationship and their marriage had veered off course time and time again because of his ceaseless  hunt for long lost myths and treasures and her reactions to it. Granted, she had been the one to drag  him along while they hunted El Dorado, but she had re-evaluated her priorities over the years and became less and less willing to go along with most of his breakneck endeavors. Still, she knew it was a part of him,  and  hell if she hadn’t fallen in love with him at first precisely  _because_ of his stupid heroics and his excitement for  forgotten history. Yes, they had agreed to let those jobs be when she had  brought it up. Her main reason wasn’t because she wanted him to stop exploring all together,  though,  she just wanted him to not die  while  doing it.  Hopefully, the change of scenery would do him good, and she was genuinely happy for him to be able to scratch that itch for adventure and the unknown in a somewhat safe setting – it would be a big step up from salvaging trucks from the murky depths of the Mississippi, but still  miles away from being chased by goons with guns.

So she had helped him pack, letting him go with a kiss and a promise to be safe and call every other day. And he had called regularly, but with every time they spoke, she became more and more sure that the undertone in his voice wasn’t a figment of her imagination – he sounded guilty. She had experienced enough of his stunts by now to know and read the clues in the tiniest of his mannerisms. On top of that, she had learned to trust her gut, and her gut was telling her that something wasn’t right when he repeatedly told her about lousy reception and the job taking longer than expected.

Still, Nate and her had a deal, and she’d  wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.  She had told herself that she wouldn’t poke around for more information on the Malaysia Job, and she was true to her word up until she saw the news report on the floodings  yesterday evening. Worried out of her mind, she had called his office  this morning. Her original plan to ask about the exact whereabouts of their crew,  an update on their wellbeing and possible risks that Nate could have withheld from her was thwarted the moment Nate’s colleague had told that her husband was away on leave and offered to hand the phone over to Jameson.  She had politely refused and apologized for making a fuss, proceeding to call in sick for work immediately after cutting the line with JMI.

She had spent the day pacing through their living room, trying to come to terms with  Nate’s possible betrayal and her own feelings about this mess. For a hot second, she feared that he up and left indefinitely again, like he had when they had first tried their hands at marriage some time after Shambala. That idea was quickly dismissed – he had called regularly, so he wasn’t bailing on her. And dammit, they had grown as a couple, evolved beyond their past mistakes, or so she thought. That still begged the question where Nate was, whether he was hurt, and  _why the hell_ he didn’t deem it necessary to keep her in the loop.  They were  _partners_ , for fuck’s sake, and in more than one sense. Why didn’t he trust in her understanding and support after all they had been through together? They had vowed to weather all literal and metaphorical storms together, and yet there he was, running off on his own again.  Also, had he really thought she wouldn’t figure it out sooner or later? She was an investigative journalist, goddammit, and she was damned good at what she did. He knew that, he had  _witnessed_ her work. Had he still not learned that going behind her back was far worse in her eyes than just tackling a problem together and talking it out?

Worry, hurt and a persistent, nagging anger were fusing after a long fight for dominance, leaving behind a tangible queasiness in her gut. She was still warring with herself whether she should just call him and confront him with his lies when her phone rang. She had asked him about the floodings, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, he sounded like she caught him off-guard when she brought it up. He still held onto his ruse, even bringing up Jameson, and his forced casualty when she’d proposed to buy a ticket to visit wiped the last of her remaining doubts.

And that’s how Elena found herself on the couch after her call with Nate, fumbling with her phone and pondering her course of action. The increasingly persistent voice in her head told her to just use the damn tracking app they had authorized for each other’s phones and get behind this whole thing. Technically and qua their agreement, it was for emergencies only, but this counted as one in her eyes. She felt slightly guilty for considering to spy on him, but she forced herself to shed those feelings – he was still the first one to have broken their word, after all. She fired up the app and started the search for the location of Nate’s phone, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping against hope that Nate hadn’t gotten himself into another reckless undertaking with lethal tendencies as a side dish. Her phone pinged, and she squinted at the words on her screen.

Maroantsetra, Antongil Bay, Madagascar. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I realized that "King's Bay" (at least according to my very brief research) isn't really a place on Madagascar, or at least not a name that's used anymore. The Bay that is probably meant in the game is Antongil Bay, seeing as two of the three presumed places for the "real" Libertalia (even if it never existed) were the Île-Sainte-Marie just south-east of it, as well as Rantabe, a small village on the Bay's shore. Rantabe seems to be really small though, and the boys and later Elena seem to have set up camp somewhere that at least counts as town-ish, so I picked the next bigger settlement: Maroantsetra (even if it's still probably to small, I guess? But please don't sue me, these are just results of a really superficial research). [Edit: I looked it up again, and Maroantsetra has a harbour and a small airport, so it's bigger than I thought from my first brief glance at Google Maps and I'm gonna keep letting the crew stay there ;) ] My headcanon is just that Nate and Sam are so immersed in their old notes that they use the outdated, pirate-time name for the place: King's Bay.
> 
> When I'm through with this, some fluffier Drake family feels are up next!


	2. Of Fallouts and Falsehoods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena confronts Nate and meets Sam for the first time. It feels like the potential end of the line, but Sully helps on the way to set things right again.

On the one hand, she was glad Ikopa’s receptionist didn’t put up anything close to a fight when she showed him a picture of Nate and Sully (because of course Nate would have dragged Sully into this, she would bet an entire year of her wage on that) and asked for the keys to their room. She was a mess inside and out – she had tried listening to meditation music _very loudly_ on the plane in a lame attempt to drown out her thoughts, but her valiant efforts to avoid any and all thinking just ended with her being overwhelmed by the same doubts and fears she had sought to suppress. She had booked the first possible flight to Madagascar, resulting in spending the last 40 hours in airports and having fitful naps on various planes.

On the other hand, a tiny part of her was offended on behalf of Nate and Sully despite being absolutely knackered – just what kind of security was this? If she ended up being right and Nathan had been meddling with shady people’s business, those people could find him just as easily.

She entered the room, the darkness and silence cluing her in on the fact that no one was home. She tossed her bag onto the nearest bed and ignored it’s soft call for more shuteye in favor of some investigation. She didn’t even need to make all that much of an effort in poking around before she found the first gun. Elena had clung to the hope that Nate didn’t tell her anything only because of a bad conscience over breaking their promise to each other. Then she had spotted some Shoreline soldiers on her way to the Motel, and her anxiety had skyrocketed – she just knew that them being here at the same time as Nate couldn’t be a coincidence. This, plus his secretiveness and now firearms were heavily pointing towards him being at least waist-deep in legal limbo, if not worse. Yet, she didn’t have it in her at the moment to be properly angry or disappointed, a weary sigh was all that ripped out of her. She briefly skimmed Nate’s improvised pinboard before shaking her head and dropping onto one of the free beds, deciding to procrastinate dealing with that dung heap for a little while longer.

* * *

Pirate treasure. Henry Avery’s pirate treasure, to be specific. She wasn’t even halfway through the notes lying around the small motel desk, but she already knew enough to fear that Nate’s obsession had reached a new peak. They had looked into other pirates, too, apparently, but the booty of the Gunsway heist alone would already be worth millions. No wonder Shoreline had been thrown into the mix – whoever else was after the treasure wanted to secure it first, and at all necessary costs. And once again, Nate had jumped in the line of fire, all the while putting on an act in front of her and entangling himself in his most intricately woven web of lies yet. They had been through variations of this scenario before, but it somehow felt worse now. She had realized that a part of them was missing since their mutual agreement to stay out of this line of work, but it still irked her that he up and dumped those principles overboard at the prospect of this treasure, leaving her out from the start instead of working something out together. How was this worth all the trouble?

“...by the time Rafe figures it out, we’ll be well on our way to Libertalia,” she heard Nate’s muffled voice through the door, someone was jiggling the keys in the lock. “Tellin’ ya- that treasure is as good as ours-- shit.”

She was hurt and she was pissed, but with his sudden and close presence in the room, the realization of much she had missed him hit her with all the subtlety of a fist to the face. Yet, she forbade herself to just leap into his arms, because they had a good amount of air to clear first. She was sure they wouldn’t be able to bounce back from this just by playing forgive and forget, she didn’t have it in her. And even though it was probably petty, Elena couldn’t help but start by rubbing in the fact that offended her the most: Him betraying the trust they’d built by fobbing her off with lies. “How’s the Malaysia job going, Nate?” she asked somberly.

When she turned around, her eyes immediately found his. “Seems like you’re a hair off course.”

His stunned silence gave her the time to briefly assess the other two people in the room – Sully, of course, and some other man she’d never seen before. Her gaze drifted back to Nate. She could see he was trying to play it cool, but his eyes were telling a different story. Apparently, he was scared shitless to fuck this up. Good. She turned back to the maps and notes on the table.

Nate seemed to regain his composure. “Elena, it’s… it’s not what it looks like.”

“Really. Because what it looks like is that you’re searching for Henry Avery’s buried treasure.” She walked over to the guns on the bed, fiddling with one. “And given the Shoreline soldiers that are all over town… I’d bet you’re not the only ones looking for it.”

“All right, well I… I guess it’s kinda what it looks like”, he chuckled uncomfortably, looking back to Sully for support. “But- but I can explain.” His tone had taken on an urgent undercurrent, but he still faltered before pressing on. “Look, it’s gonna sound crazy.”

“Try me.”

A short, determined nod was all he gave her before he pulled the rug out from under her feet. “Well, for starters, um…,” he gestured towards the unfamiliar third player in the room. “This is Sam. Sam Drake. My brother.”

“Hi,” Sam rasped with a lame wave of his hand. He was leaning against the frame of the wardrobe, still in vicinity of the door, as if he was just waiting for the right moment to bolt. She swallowed heavily. _He had to be shitting her._ Every marriage had it’s secrets, but this wasn’t just some little secret, this was life-changing, and Nate had never thought to tell her, and-

She looked from Nate to Sully, desperate for some sort of confirmation that this was just some morbid joke. It had to be. There was no way Nate wouldn’t have told her of a brother who she knew would mean the world to him with his family history, he wouldn’t have kept such a massive part of his life from her for close to eight years, impossible.

She frantically searched Sully’s eyes, although the sympathetic curl of his lips already promised the loss of her sanity. He shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

White noise started to fill her ears, and she stumbled a step back, trying to come terms with the numb void forming in her chest, growing with every breath she took. Her right arm was feeling for the table behind her, something steady to hold on to while she felt like water going down the drain. This was wrong, or maybe she had missed something, but there were no ideas coming to mind, no point where she could have taken the wrong turn, so this had to be a mistake, it just couldn’t be, but the dread filling her became more overwhelming by the second, and she still wasn’t processing-

Nate presumably started to explain, but his voice only registered dimly in her head, as if she were three feet underwater and steadily sinking. “I- I thought he had died in a Panamanian jail-”

“I need to-”

“- but I was obviously very wrong. He’s been stuck in there for fifteen years. And it’s because of me. And the guy who broke him out wants a lot of money,” he started to ramble. She braced herself on the chair, closing her eyes against the sudden nausea. “And the only way we can pay off the debt is Avery’s treasure. But that’s the good news, we found it! It’s on an island just off the coast-”

“Okay, just stop. Was there… ever… a Malaysia job?”

“I...” Nate seemed to be at a loss of words, and his silence was doing nothing for her, but it was enough of an answer. She nodded blindly, nervously fumbling with her wedding ring. She had thought that a broken promise had been the worst to stand between them, but this changed everything. In her head, she started dragging up eight years of shared moments, idly wondering if any of them had been real. What else had he kept from her? Why wasn’t she worthy of the truth? What – she realized there was no end to this downwards spiral, and she forced herself to keep an iron grip on her thoughts for now. She needed to get out and extricate herself from this mess, but most importantly she had to get away from Nathan’s eyes, begging her to _understand_...

“Okay,” she breathed, heading for the door.

“C’mon, c’mon, wait. Elena, wait!”

“I don’t get you,” she dolefully rebuked, turning around again.

“Look, I wanted to tell you-”

“You know what, enough!”

“No, I wanted to! But how could I?” Nate cried, shrugging as if to say that not telling her the truth was the inevitable course of action from the start.

She couldn’t name all of the emotions rioting in her head and the pit of her stomach, but indignation had definitely joined the bunch. “I don’t know, just say it?!”

Nate scoffed. “I had to protect you!”

The blood pulsing in her temple turned into liquid fire. “That is bullshit, Nate.” She had held her ground fine on their past adventures, she had survived Flynn’s fucking grenade, for heaven’s sake. He had gotten hurt at least just as much as her, but battling through shootouts and climbing through the Himalayas with a godforsaken gutshot wasn’t his biggest problem, no. Nathan wasn’t big on emotional talks, she had learned that the hard way during their relationship. Because he’d rather jump headfirst into the next risky business than partake in a potentially uncomfortable talk and state what was bothering him at any given moment. But to deflect his unwillingness to have a possibly inconvenient discussion and use her supposed vulnerability as an excuse... “You just didn’t have the nerve to face me. Again.”

“I knew you would react like this”, he accused. Elena gasped. Painting her the villain was the last straw, but instead of her anger reaching new heights, all the fight went out of her at once. Because her reacting like this was a direct result of his actions – it would have made all the difference if he had trusted in her from the beginning, _like they were meant to_ , like they had promised each other: For better or worse. Because Nate still didn’t understand that she hadn’t been resentful about the trip per se, it was the way he went about it. But now, and with a hitherto unmentioned brother of his in the mix...

“How would you react? You lied to me… for weeks. If you were killed, I… I wouldn’t have even known about it. And now... you have- a brother.” Disbelieving despair filled her voice and tears clouded her vision. “Who are you?”

“Come on. I’m me, c’mon, it’s me.” Nate took a step towards her, and she promptly recoiled. “It’s different this time-”

“Oh my God.”

“- I have to save him. I don’t even care about the treasure.”

Elena stared at he floor, unseeing and suppressing a scoff. He had denied it over and over again, and she had thought it to be true after Ubar, but at the end of the day, Nathan still thought he had something to prove, had to be the best and the smartest and the _first_ to reach the goal... “The look on your face when you walked into this room… If you’re done lying to me, then you should stop lying to yourself,” she reproached.

He couldn’t meet her eyes anymore, and the silence falling over them was suffocating. The five feet distance between them felt like an impassable chasm.

“I got a plane to catch,” she finally stated. “You do what you have to do”. She left the _I’m not sure if I’m still gonna be there afterwards_ unspoken and closed the door behind her.

* * *

She leaned her back against the warm wood for a minute, concentrating on being peeved that absolutely everything was warm, because the tension behind her temples, her burning eyes and the vacuum in her lungs told her of a brewing panic attack. She couldn’t focus on that, and she needed to feel some disruption from the current status quo to anchor her in the here and now before she was past the point of no return. She steered towards the pool, getting rid of her shoes and pulling up her jeans. Sitting down, she dunked her feet into the water, trying to direct all her thoughts to steady breathing and the feel of the cool wetness against her skin. She spent the next few minutes like this, breathing and feeling, until she had somewhat regained her grip on herself. Elena threw her head back and groaned at the stars. She’d come here hoping to find answers, but now she had even more questions than before, and one was more pressing than the other. But even if Nate’s story about Sam sounded like convoluted bullshit, she believed that Sam was who he said he was. A short, hysterical laugh broke out of her. _I have a brother-in-law._

“You alright, darlin’?” Sully said behind her. She turned her head and leveled a flat stare at him.

“Yeah, sorry, that was a right stupid question”, he quietly conceded as he lowered himself to sit down by her side. Silence was surrounding them again, but for the first time in twenty minutes, Elena didn’t feel like it was going to kill her.

“I already told him in Italy that he wasn’t giving you enough credit,” Sully said.

Elena grunted. Damn right. It was nice that at least Sully had paid some mind to her side in all of this and, by the sound of it, had tried to talk some sense into her husband. And _Italy?_ Nevermind talking about where their marriage could possibly go from here, Nate still had a shitload of explaining to do.

“Has Nate send you after me?” she asked sourly.

“Yeah, he did. But I’m not here because of him.”

Elena raised her eyebrows in question.

“Look, kid, I know he made a goddamn spectacular mess out of this. He may have meant well, but he fucked up. I don’t even want to debate that.” Victor pulled out one of his cigars and began patting his pockets in search of his lighter. After lighting his tobacco treat and taking the first appreciative drag, he turned his head to her once more. “I just- I know what you two have been through together, hell, I was right there alongside you for most of it…” Another hit off the cigar. His face turned thoughtful. “I’m not gonna say I know how you feel right now, but sometimes, things get worse before they get better. And I know he’s practically my son, but you’re important to me, too, and I’m not in the business of playing favorites with you two knuckleheads. I just wanted to tell you-- I’m gonna have your back, whatever you decide to do, just-- it would be a damn shame if this was the end of the line for you two.” He nodded with an air of finality, and Elena almost laughed. Sully wasn’t great at emotional talks either, but at least he got the gist across, judging by the pleased look on his face. Could just be the cigar, though.

Elena didn’t feel ready to make any promises about the future of her and Nate’s marriage, but she took Sully’s words at face value – even if she decided to end things, he would support her and hold no grudges. Considering everything she was confronted with right now, it may not be much, but it still allowed her to breathe a little easier.

They let each other just be for a while as the sweet smoke of Sully’s cigar lazily wafted through the air in front of them, the only sounds around them the chirping of cicadas and the gurgling of the pool filter, and Elena’s thoughts circled back to her talk with Nate. There was so much to take in and she was still too overwhelmed to breach the Sam topic. And while Nate had started checking off the _why_ part of her virtual questionary, she was still none the wiser about the _how_ , so she started pelting Sully with questions.

He told her everything, from when Nate contacted him, to their quite disastrous trip to Italy, their rivalry with Rafe and the involvement of Shoreline, to his secondhand retelling of the events in Scotland and how the trail had finally led them to Madagascar. That Nate and Sam suspected to be hot on the trail not only of Henry Avery’s loot, but the legendary pirate colony Libertalia and the common treasure of hundreds of pirates. He even told her about Sam to the best of his knowledge, and how he had escaped the prison in Panama. The name Alcázar rang some distant bells in her head, but she was drained and decided to look it up later, she had far more pressing matters to attend to, after all.

She looked to the sky. “A part of me just wants to take the next plane home and forget about all of this,” she mused. Sully hummed a non-answer. “But Nate is neck-deep into this mess, and even if he was everything but considerate in the last weeks, I just-- I don’t know if I can leave him like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m disappointed, and so incredibly angry that I would like to slap him across the room in the hopes of restarting his brain, and if he ever wants a chance to fix this, to fix _us_ , he’s gonna have to eat humble pie for a fucking long time, but--” she realized didn’t really know where to go with her rambling and cut herself off with a shake of her head.

“A tiny part of me tells me to stop being stupid and kick him to the curb for what he’s done, but the overwhelming majority of me just doesn’t want to lose him under any circumstances,” she whispered. “Also, I kinda knew what I signed up for. I still can’t believe he hasn’t told me about his brother, but the rest… I mean, he’s still a stupid ass, but I married him, warts and all. I just can’t deal with it right now, it’s too much, and these wounds will take a long time to heal, and the prospect of everything that needs to be done in order for us to feel whole again-- it’s just… really exhausting. And I’m already exhausted.” Her fingers dejectedly scratched over her shirt on her arms and her side, all the hurt and the talk about wounds making her old scars itch. They weren’t pretty, and she had taken a long while to fully recover, but right now with her life and her perception of truth turned upside down and her bond with Nate feeling weaker than ever before, it felt like Flynn had pulled the pin on them all over again. Sully laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and stilled her still scratching fingers with his other hand, a knowing look on his face.

Elena sighed. “They will probably get themselves killed, won’t they?”

Sully pulled a face and shrugged. “Don’t know. But-- possibly, yeah. I mean, Rafe has lost his marbles, and with Nadine and Shoreline at his beck and call...”

She puffed out her cheeks with a long inhale and blew a raspberry. “We’ll have to save their stupid asses, won’t we?”

Sully snorted. “Yeah, I’m afraid. Glad we’re on the same page, darlin’.”

Elena gave him a tired chuckle. “Well, then. Let’s get some sleep, regroup, and talk about our next steps tomorrow. I’m gonna go get a room of my own, I don’t think I can see Nate’s face yet.” While that was true, a small, devious voice in her head asked why Nate hadn’t deemed it appropriate to go look for her and try to smooth things over in the hour she had spent with Sully.

He laughed. “Can’t hold that against you.”

She stretched and made to stand up, looking around for her shoes and already thinking about the to do’s for her new plan, if only to drown out the frantic internal screaming still resounding in her head. She would go to sleep, and she would tackle this shit mountain tomorrow.

“Hey, Sully. Could you retrieve my bag from the room? I was so distraught that I just left it, and I don’t wanna go back in there-”

“You got it, darlin’.” Sully gave her a thumbs up and vanished inside. He came back out two minutes later, a carefully composed neutrality over his facial features. Whatever the reason, it, too, would have to wait until the next day.

She grabbed the bag. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, kid.” He seemed to chew on some thought for a minute before opening his mouth again. “Listen, I know I’m really not the best guy for this, but I stand by what I said earlier. And if you want to talk about this, or… whatever, I’m there for you, Elena.”

She send him a wobbly smile, before finally dropping all pretenses – and her bag. She wrapped her arms around Sully in a solid bear hug, smelling metal and leather and loads of tobacco on his shirt and the sudden but all-encompassing comfort causing a prickling feeling behind her lids because Sully, too, was _family_. And for a moment, she believed that everything would be alright.

“Thank you, Victor. I really needed this,” she tearfully beamed at him after their separation.

Sully turned bashful, swatting the notion away with his hand. “My pleasure. And now go catch some damn sleep, kid, we all need to be on top of our game if we want to get through this.”

“Aye captain, my captain!” Elena walked backwards in the direction of the reception with a salute.

Sully chuckled. “Night, kid.”

She smiled and turned around. “Sleep tight, Sully.”

She didn’t know how, she didn’t know when, but they would get through this, together, the lot of them. With this thought, at least, she would be able to get some sleep tonight.

The next morning, she met up with Sully. Nate and Sam were already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this at 2am, so all mistakes are mine, but I'm inclined to share. Thanks for reading!


	3. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena and Sully make plans to follow Nate and Sam. When she finally finds one of them on Libertalia, he takes the opportunity and starts to come clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m gonna be upfront with you: This is the longest one yet, and parts of this chapter have been conceived under a mix of fatigue and wine, so I apologize for any mistakes you find. Highscore grammar detectives get a cookie! ;)

“Will you hold him for me while I’m gonna reconstruct his face?” Elena huffed, pacing around the room. Sully chortled. “Gosh, I can’t believe him. We have a huge tiff, and then he runs off and does the exact same thing we fought about all over again. Did someone neglect to tell me we’re reenacting a warped version of the friggin’ thrice-damned Groundhog Day? And now, he doesn’t only leave me behind, he has the graciousness to let you join my little club. Un-fucking-believable,” she grumbled on. She knew that bickering wouldn’t get them anywhere, but she needed _some_ way to vent.

“Nate didn’t secretly get his pilot’s license, right?” she inquired and turned around.

Sully shook his head. “Nah.  You know he knows the basics, but the kid always had me to pilot him around. And he surely would have told-- you know what, too soon, forget about it.”  He sighed. “Point is,  I know what you’re asking, but those two numbskulls haven’t taken my plane.  And do you really think not having a license would stop him in a pinch? But  Nate knows I would beat his ass if he kidnapped Martha without so much as a by-your-leave.”  He let the unspoken  _Especially after what happened to her predecessor_ hang in the air.

“Good. Then we have at least one ace up our sleeves.” She paused briefly and laughed. “ _Martha_? When did you baptize her?”

“The question you _should_ ask is who she is named after, but a gentleman doesn’t ever kiss and tell,” Sully declared with an air of grandeur and a wink.

Elena snorted. “If it’s that kind of story, you’re more than allowed to keep your secrets, graybeard.” She clapped her hands. “Okay, back to business. We need a game plan.” Plus, the tactical process kept her busy and far away from tapping into her thoughts about yesterday’s chaos.  She was nowhere near to having worked through her pent up emotions, and she wasn’t sure  whether she’d fall apart if she examined them too closely right now.

“You said Nate showed you the clue from his rubbed off copies of the three maps. Where did it lead?”

“Well, I only got a brief look at it, but if I’m not mistaken – and you know I never am, darlin’ – then we are going right-” he turned around and pointed to the map, his index just shy of the north-eastern coast, “...here.”

“Great. Okay. We’re gonna need climbing equipment, radios and some outdoor supplies. You know where we can get those? Our dumb duo took everything you three brought.”

“There’s a merchant in town we could ask, otherwise we’ll have to drive to the next bigger city. That could take a while.”

Elena nodded. “We also need water and some food supplies.  In a perfect world, we would find them, pick them up and be out of there before this Rafe can say ‘Shoreline’, but I doubt it’s gonna be that easy. We don’t know how long it’ll take to find them, and we need to be prepared.”

She was met with silence, so she turned around to Sully, only to find him scrutinizing her.

“What?”

He shrugged and shook his head, a slow grin pulling at his lips. “Nothin’. Just, I told Nate yesterday that I’d take the trip with Sam to give him the opportunity to work things out with you, but he pretty much told me we would be stranded without him.  And… right now, I just realized again that he’s got it all upside down--  brickhead obviously forgot that while he’s adaptable and good at improvising in a shitty situation, you’re the real planner out of the two of you, and-- well, you’re always there, thinking ahead and trying to keep us from getting killed.  You’re good at this, always were-- and you still got it in you, just as much as he does, is all I’m saying. ”

She gave him a thankful smile, which slowly morphed into a smirk. “Well, then I’ll just have to refresh his memory a bit.”

“Attagirl.”

The laugh breaking free from her chest was the first heartfelt one in two weeks.

“So, we go shopping, and then we take off and go paint the town red?”

Sully retreated to the window and pulled the curtain to the side. He grimaced. “I don’t know, kid. The wind has picked up quite a bit, and it looks like there’s a storm brewing. You know I’d do just about anything for you, but being up in the air when this thing hits  seems a bit suicidal even for my taste.”

“So we’re gonna stay grounded for the day?”

“Yeah, I’d say so. Better that way.”

“Shit. The bigger their headstart, the bigger the chance they’re gonna get shot at by some trigger-happy Shoreliner before we get to them.”

Sully sighed  and patted her hand.  “I know, kid. But  apart from rustling up the stuff we need,  we ain’t changing nothing from here for the next few hours. We just gotta wait and-- they’re not completely stupid. They’ve done this before. They… they’ll be alright.”

* * *

She was nervous and miserable as she trudged through the underbrush, swatting away mosquitoes as she went and wiping sweat from her brow. At least they had finally found the stupid island – as it turned out, the place from Nate’s clue had been just another breadcrumb. Sully had touched down on Libertalia’s eastern shore, only to take off again and survey the island from above while she did the ground work. She had stumbled upon one of Shoreline’s camps after a while, had sneaked around a bit and finally snatched one of their 4x4s right from under their noses when they were distracted by the small fireworks show she had generously surprised them with. She was happy to leave the distance behind her more quickly by car since they had already lost too much time waiting for the storm to pass. After a while though, the thicket became _too_ thick and the only other way down was over a long mudslide, so she continued on foot, uneasiness roiling in her gut.  Her anger could wait, but Nate's life couldn't, and the shipwrecks around the sharp rocks on the west coast were already foreboding; her fear was only strengthened by the sounds of gunfire that disturbed the background chitter of birds and monkeys every other minute. She prayed to any deity listening that she wouldn’t need to drag Nate out of this hellhole in a body bag.

Sam, too, of course. Her brother-in-law, whom she knew next to nothing about, except for the little tidbits Sully had told her at the pool and the fact that he had spent fifteen years of his life in a Panamanian jail, and it was apparently Nate’s fault – go figure. She huffed. As if her parents didn’t already think that her choice in found family was mediocre at best – now the second Drake with prison time on his record was joining the choir, and his jail tally was even more impressive than his brother’s. The more the merrier! She bit back a grin at the thought of her parents meeting Sam. She’d still have to talk to him properly to get an idea of who he was, but from what she’d heard so far, his rapport with authorities in general wasn’t the best. Which reminded her vividly of someone with the same problem… someone she had ended up marrying, even if she was cursing him to the moon and back lately. A secretive smile stole itself onto her lips. Sam would fit right into their merry bunch of reckless idiots – there was still a frightening amount of shit to work through, but despite the frustrated anger she had banished to the far corners of her mind for the duration of their Libertalia trip, she felt that him and her would probably get along just fine, given time.

She abruptly froze in her step as gunfire echoed through the trees again. This wasn’t a mere part of the ambience anymore – this time it sounded like the shot was fired nearby. She strained her ears and heard some distant shouting, but she was still too far off to make out the words. She slowly began moving towards the commotion, gun drawn, her feet feeling their way over the uneven ground, careful to make as little noise as possible. She kept listening with baited breath, but it seemed like the thick green canopy and the moist air were swallowing all sounds except the gurgling of a nearby stream. The resulting near-silence was almost ominous.

Another gunshot made her flinch, followed by a shout.

Elena kept going, warily shuffling through the greenery, until she reached the treeline a few minutes and some hundreds of feet later. There was a cliff to her left, some 30 feet high and the derelict remains of a wooden house peeking over the edge, and she noticed the current she must have heard before, wetly coiling around the foot of the steep rock face. She let her gaze swerve, scanning the area for Shoreline soldiers and ignoring the weird, lumpy rock formation she spotted out of the corner of her eye on the far side of the clearing, where the small river vanished between the trees again.

She saw none of the beige uniforms and no signs of any run-ins, so she allowed herself to breathe properly again and relaxed the tension in her muscles.

She was debating where to go next when the unusual colors of the rocks caught her attention again, and she squinted her eyes to inspect them with greater scrutiny – but then the form and the colors were registering in her mind and a violent gasp was pried from her throat, stealing her air as her worst nightmares materialized right in front of her.

She’d know that gun holster and the man wearing it anywhere.

“Jesus, Nate!”

She had already begun sprinting towards him without even realizing it, her vision honing in on her husband lying on the riverbank and looking the exact opposite of alive and well. _God, don’t be dead, please, don’t be dead…_

“Oh… Oh my God.”

She dropped to her knees next to him. “Nate… hey-- Nate!” She turned him onto his back, frantically searching him for wounds. He looked even worse than he had in the motel, and according to Sully, they had barely escaped a deadly race with Shoreline’s men at the time. At first glance, she already spied several scratches and bruises, but what worried her most was the deep gash on the right side of his forehead, still bleeding profusely. He didn’t appear to be shot, at least.

She checked his pulse, relieved to find it somewhat steady, and began patting his cheek. “Nate? Can you hear me?” No reaction. He really seemed to be out cold.

“Okay, Fisher, don’t freak out, you got this,” she sat back on her haunches and rallied herself, looking around for any idea on how to proceed. She’d have to get him out of the water, clean and dress his wounds with the meager supplies she had, and she should probably tell Sully that she’d found at least one of the Drake siblings-- shit. Speaking of… if Nate was here, where was Sam? Had they been separated by force, or had they parted ways on their own? What if _Sam_ was shot?

“Ugh, fuck.” She was going nowhere with this, and she told herself to concentrate on the problem at hand. She spotted a fallen tree, she would be able to prop him up against it…

She lifted his torso a bit, standing up and dragging him from the riverside by the armpits, all the while careful not to jolt him too much.  Having secured his position against the tree trunk, she sat down next to him and took a short breather to calm herself down.  She told herself that Nate would be fine,  because  she couldn’t afford to crack and fall apart right now. There would still be time for that later. She grabbed the radio.

“Sully, you there?”

The static crackled a bit before Sully answered. “You bet. Whaddaya got?”

“I just wanted to let you know I found Nate. He’s unconscious, but I’ll give you an update when he’s up and running again.”

“Roger. What about Sam?”

“Beats me, but maybe Nate knows.”

“Okay. Just… stay safe, will ya?”

“Yeah. Catch you later, okay? I’ll look after Indiana Jones here for now.”

“Got it.”

She packed the radio away again and  dug up her mental tally of Nate’s injuries. The cut on his forehead definitely demanded attention first, but while it would maybe cause him less pain to treat it while he was passed out, it could still be enough to jerk him out of it, and she wanted to let him come to in his own time. She decided to take care of his smaller sores first.

She looked around for the bag she brought, until she remembered that she’d left it in the car to allow faster progress, together with the rest of her stuff and the kit containing the basic medical supplies she’d packed – gauze, disinfectant and some ointment. “Shit.” At least she still had some clean cloth and a bottle of water on her to cleanse his wounds, she didn’t trust the muddy stream not to make Nate’s condition worse by bringing some new germs to the party.

It took her about half an hour to clean all the cuts and scratches she could find and reach without jostling him around too much. When she finished, she opted to sit down beside him again, waiting for him to wake and gently brushing his hair out of his eyes every once in a while. After some time, he finally let out a weak groan and started to shift.

“Hey, hey, go slow, Nate.”

He blinked owlishly, trying to adjust to the light around him and turning his head in the direction of her voice. “’Lena?” he slurred.

“Yeah, I’m here. Take it easy, you hit your head pretty hard. Might have a concussion, actually.”

With her help, he sat up, now aware of his surroundings and finally leveling a clear gaze at her.

“You’re really here?” He sounded surprised.

“Well, I’m no mirage, I swear.” She rolled her eyes and poked him gently in the ribs. “See?”

Nate couldn’t hide his flinch upon contact and Elena immediately shied away, sizing him up with a worried look. “Shit. Did I hurt you?”

“Nah. Ticklish, remember?”

She sat back with a disbelieving laugh. “Let me get this straight. You look like you’ve been dragged through hell and back, you have a major _laceration_ on your head, but you complain about _tickling_?” She rolled her eyes skyward. “Jesus, Nate, you have some nerve.”

“Yeah, I’m happy to see you, too.”

She turned sober, slightly shaking her head. “You really look like shit. What happened to you?”

“Like, in the last hour, or since I last saw you? If you want the short version of the last-- huh… seventy minutes – I got my ass handed to me by Nadine Ross, I’d say it was a pleasure, but it really wasn’t. Well, and then Rafe shot at me shortly after, I fell down a cliff, then a whole lot of nothing, and… here we are.”

“Anything broken? Have you been shot somewhere that I don’t see?”

He shook his head, immediately convulsing at the motion, a pained groan escaping him.

“Jesus goddamn Christ, I have the mother of all headaches.” He reached up, his hand clearly aiming to fumble around his wound, only to be swatted away by Elena.

“No wonder, from how it looks, you’re lucky you didn’t crack your skull. Did that happen when you fell down?”

Nate nodded slowly, careful to not set off another round of piercing pain in his head.

She bit her lip sympathetically. “I really wish I could tell you to lay down and sleep it off, but we gotta get off this pirate dump first, okay? Do you think you can make it?”

“Yeah, just… gimme some time to catch my breath, I’ll be as good as new. Promise.” He promptly winced. “I mean-- I’m… crap, you… .” He wasn’t looking at her, seemingly at a loss for words, and she presumed he had just unwittingly reminded himself of how this whole affair had started: With a promise he didn’t keep. She was pretty sure that he’d be closing up completely in a matter of minutes, preferring to stew in his own thoughts lest she decided to have that dreaded talk. But she also had been his wife and his friend for years, so she knew that some teasing would help to bring him out of his funk.

“You know, when Sully and me realized you two had already vanished without a peep – _again_ , if I may remind you – I told him that when we found you, he should hold you down while I would, and I quote myself verbatim here, reconstruct your face.” She gestured towards his temple and smirked slightly. “Looks like your pirate colony already did the job. I’m officially out of work here.”

“Hilarious, really. I'm all out of pity 'bout that, but I’ll see about the donations account you’ll need.”

“Mhh, generous of you. But no talk of a pirate treasure you’ll get a hold of soon? I’m surprised.”

Nate’s face fell and he grunted, looking at his legs stretched out in front of him. “Unlikely.”

Elena furrowed her brow at his reaction. “What do you mean?”

“The treasure. Sam-- ugh… he just… we won’t need it anymore.” He saw the bewilderment on her face and carried on. “This whole thing… it’s just make-believe. I mean, the colony and everything is real, just, us being here… it’s all part of Sam’s fairy tale.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Okay, I’ll just start at the beginning. Right, so Sam came to the office – blind-sided me, really, I mean, I thought he was _dead_ , and you know I’m not big on esotericism, but I felt like goddamn Demi Moore in _Ghost,_ ya know, just without the whole pottery stuff… anyway, he came to me, and he told me they had made an example of him in that Panamanian hellhole. He said he was broken out by Hector Alcázar and his men, but he wanted compensation, namely Avery’s treasure, so he wanted Sam to procure it, or otherwise Alcázar would kill him-”

“Holy shit,” Elena gasped, having gone pale and looking off into the middle distance.

“Yeah, it sounds pretty bad, but you don’t have to worry, because actually-”

“No, no no, listen, I just remembered something! The part about Alcázar already bugged me back at the motel-”

“Wait. I never said who it was… how do you…?”

“Sully told me. Anyhow, I thought something was fishy because the name rang some bells, but I was so rattled that I simply dismissed it – but just now I recalled an article I read some months ago, about a shootout in Argentina… gah, I hate myself for not connecting the dots earlier! Nate, Alcázar-”

“-is dead, yeah. Rafe told me. That’s actually… Rafe was the one who got Sam out. No breakout either, of course, Rafe just greased the warden and… voilà.” He sighed, scratching away some dried mud from his shirt. “Two years, Elena. Sam’s been out of prison for two years, never once trying to get in touch until like three weeks ago, and I...” He kept on fumbling with his shirt, angrily mumbling under his breath.

Elena gently stilled his hand with hers. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No- yes… I don’t know. I just feel so… used and... betrayed, but-- like, I also know that’s rich coming from me when I’m talking to you, and I just... I desperately think I owe you an explanation and an apology first.” He took a deep breath before he continued. “In the beginning, I wanted to tell you, I swear. Hell, before he thought up that Alcázar story, I even told him him I wasn’t gonna do it, that he should just bring Charlie along... But he told me he needed _me_ , that he didn’t trust anyone else with his life. And I just felt so goddamn _guilty_ , because he’d been rotting in prison while I was out in the world, and if I had just dug a little deeper, had been more persistent… I felt like crap because I gave up on him too soon, and at the time, I genuinely thought Sam’s life was in danger, the time frame was _all kinds_ of tight, and I’d just gotten him back, so… I just didn’t want anything to jeopardize this. Not… not even you.” He looked down. “I was majorly stupid, and when you caught us in the motel, I-- it was a real hit between the eyes, and I was staggered and kind of afraid you’d axe me for what I did, so I said some things I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. And don’t get me wrong, I’m really… I’m glad you’re here, honestly. I want to make it up to you. And… I’m grateful you didn’t give up on me.”

The look in his eyes was scared and wary, as if he carefully rolled every word around in his head and mouth before talking, as if he’d say one wrong word and she’d leave him in the dirt… and it was heartbreaking. They still had a mile to go, and she would hold Nate to his promise to make amends, but now that he had started to be honest with her about his reasons, she just wanted things to become okay between them again.

“Nate, I--”

She wrapped her arms around him in a weird side hug that he reciprocated after a beat. “I missed you. And I’m happy you’re alive.” Her voice broke a bit on the last word. She pressed her face into his shirt and promptly got a good whiff of him, her nostrils filling with an unholy combination of sweat, grime, gunpowder and gasoline.

She wrinkled her nose. “Nate, you smell.”

He laughed weakly. “Yeah, you won’t believe it, but it’s really hard to get a decent shower around here.” He slightly tightened his hold on her waist. “Listen, I’m… I missed you, too. And I’m sorry. For everything.”

She nodded slightly against his arm, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, drinking in this small moment of refuge.

“You’re not off the hook, you know?” She whispered after a while. “I’m just aware that right now, there are far more important things, like getting off this island in one piece, but we’re still gonna talk about this in more depth.”

She could feel him nodding over her head. “Yeah, I know. I’m just glad you still want to talk to me at all.”

Elena smiled to herself. “As you should be. But… no more secrets, okay? We’re in this together.” He nodded again, and she started to disentangle herself from him. “I hate to be a killjoy, but I think we should get this show on the road.” She pointed to his forehead. “Let me have a look at that. I didn’t want to bother you with it while you were unconscious, but I really think we should clean that before we get going.”

He stayed put against the log while she got started on his wound.

“Hey, Nate?”

“Mmmh?”

“How did you end up in a Panamanian jail, anyway? And you had better not leave out any life-changing parts again.”

He chuckled faintly and started to talk. She had been vaguely aware of what his boyhood looked like, but he told her loads and even elaborated on the things she already knew: That Sam and he had only become invested in Avery’s story because of their mom’s research. How they had joined forces with Rafe on their quest, which brought them to bribing their way into a prison – a first – in hopes of picking up the trail. After recounting the miserable breakout, he went even further back and delved into details of his childhood she’d never heard before. She had known that his mom died and his dad gave him away to the orphanage, but now, he filled her in on the how and why, and that Sam had always been there, protecting him, the only constant of his early life, even if they got into a lot of shit together. He ended with the night he and his brother decided to shed the remains of their so far disappointing lives, becoming Drakes and striving for purposes bigger than themselves.

“And everything changed after that. Y’know, we became… explorers. Adventurers. Mostly thieves-- ow!”

The blood had mostly dried, making it more difficult to clean the wound without causing pain, and she started to regret her earlier decision. “Okay, just hold still.”

“You know, for a while it felt like… if we weren’t taking turns going to jail… it was because we were in jail together.” He chuckled and heaved a sigh. “And… after I lost him, I-- or, after I _thought_ I lost him...”

“You didn’t want to bring him back up again.”

“Something like that.” He stared into space while she shifted in her seat. “Well, that’s it.” He looked up at her again. “Now you know everything.”

Elena huffed, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. “With you, I doubt that that’s everything.” Her expression turned serious again and she weighed the cloth in her hand. “But… it’s a lot.”

“Love to know what you’re thinking,” he murmured, almost timidly scanning her face for a reaction. Elena certainly had a lot to say, but she knew that more heavy talk would get them nowhere at the moment, and the worst things between them had been cleared. So she squashed the forlorn feeling in her chest and decided to tread a lighter path.

“I’m thinking that you’re lucky that I found you when I did.”

“Yeah.” He tentatively gave her one of his lopsided smiles, and her heart ached a bit. With the current tranquility between them, she was glad she had decided that she wouldn’t touch the talk they’d still have to have with a ten foot pole – not with the things that still needed to be done looming ahead.

“I’m glad you didn’t lose a limb or anything,” she said teasingly, readying herself to stand up. “It would’ve been a royal pain getting you out of here.”

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“Oh you know, easy,” she replied, deliberately cheerful. “Just follow the sound of gunfire.”

Nate laughed. “No, I mean, how did you... get here…?”

Elena raised a sardonic eyebrow and let the sound of the approaching plane speak for itself.

“Oh… of course.”

She raised the radio to her mouth. “Come in, Sully.”

“Hey, darlin’. How’s he doing?”

“Oh you know, he’s banged up, but he’s alive. Par for the course.” Nate had started standing up, low curses and hisses accompanying him on his way back to the glorious world of bipeds.

“Now we just need to rescue the other Drake,” Elena announced. Nate’s head swiveled abruptly in her direction, a stunned, but grateful look on his face – they hadn’t really talked about Sam’s rescue yet, but he was glad it seemed to be a given for her.

“What do you mean?” Sully piped up.

“I’ll let Nate tell you.” She tossed the radio over into her husband’s waiting hands.

“Hey, pal. Glad you could join us,” Nate greeted.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t miss it. So what happened to Sam?”

“Rafe’s got him,” Nate declared, starting to wander around.

“Shit. You know where they are?”

“Yeah. They’re headed to the northern side of the island. See if you can find a place to set down over there. Once we get Sam, we’re going to need to get outta here pretty quick.”

“Copy that. Hey, hey-- what about the treasure?” Sully asked.

“Forget it.” Nate looked over to Elena. “We don’t need it.”

“But Alcázar--?”

“No-- There is no Alcázar. It’s all bullshit.”

“Wait. You mean… the debt, the… the escape--?”

“Yeah. Sam made it all up.” He send another loaded gaze her way. “What an asshole, right?”

“Look, I’ll fill you in on everything when I see you, ‘kay?” Nate appended. 

“Yeah, I can’t wait. Look, you two be safe down there.”

“You know us,” Nate said, ending the radio contact.

Elena handed him a gun, eyeing the radio. “Trade ya.” He handed it over and she clipped it back to her belt.

“Thanks,” Nate muttered.

“Sure.”

He stopped her by grabbing her arm when she walked around him. “No, I mean… thanks for saving me. Again.”

She stared at him weightily. “I almost didn’t this time.”

Nate nodded once. “Right...”

He was still cautious around her, but then again, she appreciated that he took his breach of trust seriously. And with what Sam had put him through… But they had a lot of ground to cover, and they could deal with it on en route – and later, on their way home.

“C’mon. I got us a ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm trying to keep the balance between keeping Elena and Nate in character with their in-game depiction and giving them space to discuss their problems more in depth, even if I keep postponing the real heavy talk. I just think that the game's set-up and pacing (as much as I love it!) only leaves so much room for them to work through their feelings and insecurities, and on top of that, they are in constant survival-mode on Libertalia, what with Rafe and Shoreline loitering about. Anyways, if you have pointers or think that the characterization of their internal crises could still use some work, please give me a heads-up! While I'm mainly working through my own headcanons here, I would be delighted to have some input from you.


End file.
